Mog Offers Freemium Streaming Service

Battle for the Ears - Mog Is the Latest Music Streaming Service to offer a
free ad supported version of it's Music Software.

It appears that streaming service Mog has thrown it's hat into the ring of ad supported streaming services like Spotify.  Today they announced a free version of their site via press release :

Berkeley, CA – September 14, 2011 – MOG®, today announced a free, ad-supported version of its award-winning on-demand music service, which will go live on MOG.com as of 9:00am EST 6:00am PDT on Thursday, September 15. Music lovers can access MOG’s entire catalog of over 11 million songs, nearly everything you’d find in popular music download stores, for free, making it the easiest way to enjoy instant access to music with no installable client application and no credit card needed. The free version will be ad-free for the first 60 days so fans can get a taste of the service without any distractions.

Free listeners on MOG receive a virtual “gas tank” full of music visibly integrated into the service. The refillable tank, called FreePlay, is built upon sophisticated game mechanics that enable users to earn free music in perpetuity, simply by listening, sharing with friends and exploring MOG. The FreePlay tank showcases how much free music a user has along with “earn music” and “upgrade” links that provide listeners the opportunity to earn more music, or upgrade to MOG Primo, a subscription plan that includes unlimited, ad-free music, and access to MOG via mobile devices, consumer electronic and streaming entertainment devices, and soon, the car.

I have actually been a member of Mog over 4 years (and regularly use the service).  I have watched as the site has evolved (although some in the community might argue it de-volved) from a vibrant, community and music blog based web stop that was akin to Facebook, into a sleek (yet soulless) streaming service.  What once was a bustling hub of user generated content, became a ghost town of abandoned user pages and posts as the company shed it's die hard users and loudest promoters and restructured to meet the needs of the new wired music customer/consumer.

I am wistful for the days of getting the daily notifications, and reading daily posts from my 80 or so "favorite" Moggers.  We often would start posting frenzy's for a chance at the "Mogger of the Week", in which you might receive the coveted Mog T-shirt (and even more coveted eyeballs reading your daily musings about music).  It was a friendly competition in which we all enjoyed taking part - honing our writing to areas of interests, yearning for the discussions that your post might generate in the comments.  But it was not meant to last.  VC money came on board and big names like Rick Rubin were thrown around by site founder, David Hyman (who you could once have a dialog with through his Mog account -as he was a frequent blogger himself - whose last post was over a year ago.).  Soon enough, the community began to disintegrate as Mog dropped it's allegiance to, and support for it's community, and retooled itself as a service, rather than a destination.

I understand how hard it is to run profitable website, much less find a specific niche on the web, where there's a million inferior sites that are similar to the great ones.  Web version 3.0/HTML 5 looks to change the way we look at what a website is - everything will be an app as we cross the threshold from websites resembling the printed page to being an even more multimedia embedded experience that exists somewhere between traditional printed magazines and a more personalized television network.

Certainly anyone in marketing could tell you that a product you make can't do everything, nor can it be everything to everyone.  Mog's streaming service is top notch - offering 320 Kbps downloads to your phone (the best sound quality, to my knowledge, of any of the streaming services).  Their catalog is huge, rarely am I unable to find an album I'm looking for.  I even feel like a magician sometimes when my kids request something like Spongebob, and I can pull it up in a few seconds.  It has drastically altered how I download music to my phone - often choosing the Mog Client app for my iPhone over iTunes.

Yet if one is to visit Mog now, it is a shell of it's former glory as a website.  Though, you can find it if you know how, there are no obvious links to the community that gave Mog that step up to what it now is. Absent are the people like myself, and about 120 other Moggers (we now prefer the term Mog Orphans or Morphans) who made the site what it was - a rich tapestry of different musical tastes and opinions, a dedicated community who were essential to filling the site with content or "filling the gaps" about bands/artists who had no info to accompany their profiles, obsessives who checked our posts many times daily to see how many comments had gotten on our latest topic.

To some of us music has always been a viral form of expression - even before the internet coined the term as to what we think of as "viral".  It wasn't your job, rather it was your duty to expose people to the sounds that touched your soul.  The amount of time we spent digging through bins at record stores, the percentages of paychecks dedicated to finding the next sound was testament to our love.  Many of us have reconnected (like most of the world) on Facebook, and it offers the most readily available outlet for us now, but by no means an end to our means.  We still crave the community and commonplace we find within a community (digital or otherwise).  Mog, at one point, actually felt like it was built for us.

We know that music is what is most important when we gather (there have been a number of Mogger meetups across the country, and our own "mogbassador" Lizziegreeneyes, probably holds the record for meeting the most Moggers in person), everything else is secondary.  We can deviate on almost everything politically, morally, socially and religiously - but music is our common thread, and none of that other stuff seems as important once we start rapping about tunes.  We live in a world where everything is out there, digital crate digging isn't quite the same high we once got, but the thrill of discovery still remains and there are those of us who still need each other to help us find that certain something that we need.

                                                          Mog Testimonials from "Listeners" of Mog, not interviewed, actual Moggers

Stream it Boyeee!

The Hot Sauce Committee Part 2

Make Some Noise...

I'm just gonna post Beastie Boys related stuff here until the album comes out May 3rd, just because the boys still are relevant.

Beastie Boys - Make Some Noise - Free Music Videos - Top Songs

Fight For Your Right - Revisited

One of the few bands albums I will probably seek out The day it comes out (May 3rd).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBa5qp9sUOY&feature=youtube_gdata_player

A Cartoonists Manifesto, of Sorts

I did this blog post/rant old school style -  in my notebook, off the cuff.  Re-assembling it in Photoshop as on "page".  Ironically, as much as it is about being a cartoonist, it hasn't a single picture.  How post-modern of me.  I like the idea of a blog post being contained in a scanned image, somewhat  unsearchable by the internet spiders.  I'm testing this out, and will probably upload a better version to Flickr later.

Fuck Your Luddites - Friedman on Sabotage

I just discovered that early skateboard/hardcore/hip hop photographer Glen E. Friedman has a blog. I guess this isn't surprising, since everyone and their mother has one, but I'm always impressed when one of my hero's has one and waxes polemic.

An interesting post on Glen E. Friedman's Blog "What The Fuck Have You Done" on Robots vs. Luddites

White People

Sometimes you just look around and certain amount if normalcy or predictability in your life make you sick. You kind of wonder what's up, and why doesn't anyone give a shit. Allow me, if you will a simple rant. My apologies to those without a sense of humor.

White People
are happy play drums along to some live music by a reggae band fronted by this guy:

But not before stopping here:


or here:in their car:
with their dog:
that they just picked up from:

maybe he got a brand new

who got a hold of their copy of:

Which they borrowed from their friend from the bar:

so now they gotta go back to the bookstore:

and get another copy...and maybe pick up a new release:

Now In Infinite Jest -David Foster Wallace (1962-2008)

I don't know what I'm more shocked by - the suicide of writer/meta-fictionalist David Foster Wallace, or the surprising lack of coverage of his death. I mean, Wallace style of incredibly descriptive prose, ridiculous amounts of footnotes, and playful use of punctuation was somewhat prescient to what the whole blog-o-sphere is today.

In the monster book, Infinite Jest, there exists a movie that is so entertaining, that the viewer becomes so enthralled by it that they can do nothing else and actually expire watching it. Somehow I can't help but connecting this metaphore to the Twitter/Blog-o-sphere.

I've actually never made it through Infinite Jest, for one reason or another, but always found Wallaces essay's so incredibly great. Pick up Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, or A Supposedly Fun Thing I will Never Do Again. Wallace did change my view of what was possible in Fiction and Non-Fiction alike, and I am grateful for that.

Here's a link to the LA Times Obituary on D.F.W.

And Now We Turn to the Comics page..

Here's a little something I worked up a couple years ago. I guess you can see who I really think benefits from all these copyright battles (My apologies for it being so hard to read. I will post a better quality version later this evening).

Against Me - "Up The Cuts"

I checked out this album from the library, and I'm really digging this track right now. here's some second hand smoke I remember catching from the blogosphere (all of which is completely arbitrary and without citation). Against Me! has a very loyal following. Some people think they have sold out with this record, or they've moved to a major label, and it's that same ol' same ol' cry from the people that were there first.

Personally this is all new to me, so thankfully I can hear this album for what it is, and that's a pretty straight forward rock record with really strong vocals and lyrics. I'm liking it.

Hobo! - The Musical

Harry Partch (1901 - 1974) is probably a lesser known legend in the world of "classical" music. I put the term "classical" in quotes because it, unfortunately - like the term "modern", usually tends to refer to a composer or type of music that uses orchestration. In reality the Classical period is the time in art from 1750 - 1820 [1]. But I digress...

Partch was the type of American genius that could only come out of the cultural mix that is America.

"In 1930 Partch broke with Western European tradition and forged a new music based on a more primal, corporeal integration of the elements of speech with music, using principles of natural acoustic resonance (just intonation) and expanded melodic and harmonic possibilities. "[2]

Along with that Harry Partch is also famous for inventing the 43-Tone Scale.

Partch may be best known for U.S. Highball, A Musical Account of Slim's Transcontinental Hobo Trip. A piece he based off his own travels from Caramel, California to Chicago, Illinois in 1941. Here's a clip below with a brief explanation.





Here's a clip from a 1968 documentary on Partch, with footage of Harry playing some of his invented instruments:



And here are clips to a 6 part BBC documentary on Youtube:
part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Part 4:

Part 5:

Part 6:

Zombies and the Fine Art of Hiaku...How Many Syllables is "Braaaaaaaains"?

Zombies. Is there any greater horror movie monster? How about Zombies doing Hiaku? Didn't think so.

In Other News...We Have Jet Packs! Hello Future!

I don't know about you but this little YouTube video:

But it looks like the future we were promised is finally here! Finally a world in which we have out own jetpacks. I'm giddy.

I Love Process Part 5 - Al Jaffee, King of the "Fold-In"

For anyone who grew up devouring Mad Magazine, such as myself, you may be thrilled to hear Al Jaffee is approaching his 400th Mad Fold-In - the back cover gags that allowed the reader to line up the points of a picture and expose a punchline.

Al Jaffee is one of those cartoonists whose creativity knows no limits, and I'm am always happy to see that he is still so vital and creative in his old age. That's definitely something to aspire too.

Now the question is, when is Mad going to publish the page a day fold in calendar? I'd definitely buy that!

Link to the article at New York Times.com.

I Love Process, Part 4 - Rolito and Patapon

Few games have ever been based solely on the work of an artist or designer. Sony's Japan Studio has based the game Patapon on French artist Rolito (real name Sebastien Giuli) comical 2-D silhouette tribal eyeball like characters called Patapon's. A wild, and addicting romp of a game that shows just how much is still to be explored in the making games that have total immerse experiences in the worlds in which they create, and get the player involved.

Patapon is a key based rhythm game for PSP, like Pappa The Rappa or Guitar Hero/Rock Band. But it diverges from a rather simple setup that other rhythm based games have by adding elements of god games, and strategy play, all controlled by tapping out key patterns to infectious little ditty's that allow your tribe of Patapon's to hunt, attack rival tribes, or defeat large imposing monsters. The goal is to help your Patapons regain their once mythic glory.

This game ranks up there with other such unique game play experiences as Katamari Damacy, in which seemingly simplistic worlds offer a depth of insight into the characters you control. Where KD offered a world of seemingly infinite expansive obsessive collecting (that is until you have finished the game), Patapon offers a fun alternative to the music/dance/karaoke versions of rythm based game play that are popular right now.


Patapon offers a wonderful example of how games can act as a narrative as well as be just plain fun to play. Rolito's geometrically cute art work is reminiscent of online comics artists like Damian5 or the Japanese Neo style of drawing as seen in works like Matthew Cruickshank and Barry Baker (the sadly offline) re imagining of Mickey Mouse

Matthew Cruickshank and Barry Baker's Neo Mickey

With technology, we can bring the mountain to Mohamed, if you will. We can create a frightening Middle Earth in which all that is absent is the smell of the breath of the Orcs as their cast brought to life from the bowels of hell. Yes, we can do epic and monumental things that will always wow and captivate us. But it is moments like leading my Patapon's in a charge against the enemy that I truly value as an entertainment experience. Like reading a good comic book or doodling a character whose story comes to you as if they were alive, sometimes simplicity in narrative and form is better than "Gee Whiz" and "Bang! Bang!"

interview with Rotoli at Gamasutra

In Praise of the Art of The Video Game - A Further Need for Proper Video Game Criticism (Not Reviews)

I love video games. With all my education over the years and desire to continually "search for the truth", my need constant need for debate and dialogue about the world around me, I still find myself coming back to, and enjoying video games. I love old fashioned board games, card games, and strategic games of chance (such as backgammon, or horse shoes, bocci, etc.) - it all compels me. Games played with others are an incredibly necessary social tool, of which I would always choose over playing a game by myself.

Video games, on the other hand, offer the challenge of bettering yourself against computational odds, setting a goal and figuring out ever changing problems and patterns within the set confines and rules of an environment, and accomplishing them. On top of that, they are extremely effective in the instant gratification department.



But aside from game play, I am always interested in what goes into a game, how they can expand the players point of view in ways they never imagined.

I often cite Will Wright's Sim City as one of my favorite, and best video games of all time. How could a game that dealt with urban planning be any fun what so ever? Well, as a twelve year old boy, Sim City sparked something within me very few had - inspiration. I was instantly sucked in by it's possibilities and unique environment and game play. It quite simply blew the roof off of the notion of what a video game was. There had never been a game presented in this manner to me - this was one that made me think in ways I never had. I had to think about the result of performing an action within a game and how that might effect future game play, I had to make sure I had enough money in the bank to rebuild if a natural disaster occurred, I had to figure out, through trial and error, how to make the city run at a profit, so it could continue to grow. Sim City presented elements of Science, Economics, basic math and banking skills (which as an admitted life long math phobic, is something of a feat to keep me interested), and Urban Planning in the form of a "sandbox" environment that was as much fun as building a train set.

At it's heart, a game is made up of a set of rules one must follow to win or end said game. Add a set of variables (advantages, disadvantages, delays) that are put in place during game play that can keep you from accomplishing this, while another player advances, and you have the root of what makes a game "fun" or "challenging." For a long time I have adamantly opposed cheating in any form of game play with others, because I believe it offers the one, static, formula that makes up a true test of mental skill. Cheating should be reserved for real life, when we often are allowed to (and encouraged to) act in our own self interest to get ahead. In the world of gaming, this is sacrilegious. We must come to the game with our own experience, ready to test our meddle against others, on a level playing field/board/mmorpg of mental dexterity.

That's not to say cheating doesn't run rampant, everywhere, even in the gaming world, but I see it as the truest test of character of a person, on how they handle themselves in a gaming situation. Perhaps one of the few windows into a persons soul that we get in this life. Admittedly, I have found cheats or walk through to games I just can't finish on my own, or have grown tired of, but in terms of competition, I feel you must bring what you have in your head to the table (or console, or board).

The truth is that, for the most part, we don't have anything like game criticism, and we need it -- to inform gamers, to hold developers to task, and to inform our broader cultural understanding of games and their importance and impact on our culture. - Game Criticism, Why We Need It, and Why Reviews Aren't It by costik

This statement couldn't be more correct. Video games are still a relatively new teritory, in terms of criticism. While there are sites out there that are looking at games as art, most offer the thumbs up, thumbs down approach to placing a value on a game. We need to look at games as a whole - social impact, cultural implications, metaphors, and style present within. Just as a film is not a single artists work, but an amalgam of talented individuals working together towards a shared vision, so to are video games. It's time we enjoy them with both sides of our brains too.

I'm a Walking Parody of Everything I Know - Parody, Re-contextualization, and Mashing Up Your Own Unique Experience

I often wonder if it's inherent in our human nature to take that what we know (songs, stories, jokes, experiences, and art) and re contextualize it into our own creation. I am a graphic designer by day and a cartoonist at heart. I thirst for satire, parody, puns (clever and bad ones, alike), situations, and stories I can distill into a frame by frame sequence. I'm a writer with pictures, which seems to require a certain innate need to reference the things people know (symbols, images, experience, movies,music, and political reference) sometimes easier at conveying an idea over a simple attempt at an emotional impact.

But I can't help but thinking that the need to re-appropriate is more biological within humans than it is preferential. I think it is in our nature to create collages, mash ups, and remixes of music, video, and photograph's. The very first piece of pop cultural ephemera I can recall effecting me a was an issue of Mad Magazine which parodied the cover of Time magazine. It incidentally was my first introduction to Mad Magazine, an endless source of parody and ridicule I would devour as fast as the sugary candy usually purchased with it. You might say parody and satire were the backbone of the house that Alfred E. Newman built.


But there was something about growing up in the 80's - parody or re-appropriation was everywhere. New Wave seemed to be a mash up of the lighter (more neon) side of punk rocks fashion sense, mixed with a retro futurism of the space age 50's. Shows like Saturday Night Live, were established to skewer cultural institutions and pop culture alike, while being a pop cultural institution themselves. And a young "Weird" Al Yankovic found a special niche parodying the hits of the day with song parodies like "Eat It" (for Michael Jackson's "Beat it", and "Like a Surgeon" to Madonna's "Like a Virgin"). Al Yankovic actually stood as a one man cultural re contextualizing, mash up force. He not only made spot on musical parodies of the music he lampooned, he made parody videos that mimicked the some of the better known imagery MTV was producing and sending through the closed circuit network of cable television. Al Yankovic was a one man monopoly of pop stardom parody. Like an appearance on The Simpson's would be many years later, to be parodied by "Weird" Al, was a cultural cache, a badge of honor, and it would seem that it often lent to a further increasing popularity of the artist who was lampooned.

You tube videos:

Michael Jackson - "Beat It"



Weird Al Yankovic - "Eat It"



But here's where I feel it's more in our biological nature to reference the past, or past work of others. One need only to look at back at Folk and traditional music to see this trend repeated again and again. I've figured out 3 ways in which music is often re-contextualized:

1. Traditional Melodies or well known existing are recycled (lyrics are often changed or "updated")
2. Versus addendum (versus are sometimes added)
3. Song Theme's are expanded upon.

Here are 3 good examples of this in practice:
1. "Love Me Tender" - Elvis Presley (Ken Darby - Credited to Verra Matson/Elvis Presley)
"Aura Lee" or "The Maid with the Golden Hair" (music by George R. Poulton, lyrics by W.W. Fosdick).

Here's the "original" via YouTube (the dudes a bit of a tool, but it was a good version of lyrics and melody):



and of course the Elvis Presley version, where he puts the crooner shine on in the "68 Come back" special:



2. "Amazing Grace" - John Newton

This song was written by Englishman John Newton and sung over a variety of different tunes before being attached to the tune "New Britain." The tune is believed to be of Scottish or Irish origin[1]. The song continued to update and evolve when brought to America, and was not spared from the addendum phenomenon:
<br>
Link to song performance of the song by The Hargroves at The Internet Archive

From wikipedia:

In her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe includes an extra, final verse which may have been taken from another hymn. The additional verse is part of most hymnals today.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

Bright shining as the sun,

We've no less days to sing God’s praise

Than when we’ve first begun.

Whereas the original lyrics were penned by John Newton in 1772
(stanzas 1-6), this additional verse (stanza 7) was written in the
nineteenth century, and is credited by some to John P. Rees (1828-1900)^[4]. This verse became firmly established as part of the hymn by its addition in popular hymnbooks of the early twentieth century.

3. "Maggie's Farm" - Bob Dylan


image source - http://www.bobdylanroots.com/down.html

Next to Dylan's "Royal Albert Hall" performance, Dylan going Electric at The Newport Festival in 1965, has to be one of the single most iconoclastic moments in pop culture (even if recounts are often more profound then it was actually experienced.) In the book, Behind The Shades: Revisited by Clinton Heylin, Johnny Taplin is quoted as saying that Dylan "seemed to be crying" (pp. 213) after the performance, even though people like Joe Boyd got it, and were "lapping it up"(pp. 211). But the act of playing "Maggie's Farm" electric, with a rock band, at a folk festival, was a sign of protest in itself, lending to the ever deepening history of music evolving.

From Wikipedia -

"Maggie's Farm" is Dylan's declaration of independence from the protest
folk movement. Punning on Silas McGee's Farm, where he had performed
"Only a Pawn in Their Game" at a civil rights protest in 1963 (featured
in the film Don't Look Back), Maggie's Farm recasts Dylan as the pawn
and the folk music scene as the oppressor. Rejecting the expectations
of that scene as he turns towards loud rock n' roll, self-exploration,
and surrealism, Dylan intones: "They say sing while you slave / I just
get bored."

a YouTube video of that performance:



"Dylan biographer Robert Shelton
traces the origins of his 1961 song "Hard Times in the Country" to
"Penny's Farm," a 1920s musical complaint about a rural landlord; it is
also similar to Gid Tanner and Riley Puckett's
1934 song "Tanner's Farm."' - William Ruhlmann (All
Music Guide)

A link "Down on Penny's Farm" performed by Charlie Parr at The Internet Archive.

This behavior doesn't always apply to just music, though. Even the visual arts have their progenators of recontextualization such as Joseph Cornell. Cornell seemed just as comfortable re-appropriating dime store tchotchkies and print matter into mystical little worlds or spiritual shrines of his own devising. Cornell even had a correspondence of cultural mashing with one of the first modern artists to turn art on it's head - Marcel Duchamp [further reference]. When one views the work created between the two in correspondence, assisting Duchamp with his Dossier project, it is clear that even Cornell was helping Duchamp to re-contextualize and re-invent himself once more.

So what is this need, this compulsion for us to take, riff, expand upon, collapse, rearrange, deconstruct, reconstruct, and recompose something we enjoy so much. Since I was a kid, I love to flip the lyrics of a popular song to fit a situation, no matter how silly. It's a sort of mental free form improv gymnastics for me. I like seeing if I can fit my thoughts within the context of the "original". "Stop Your Sobbing" is sung to my daughter with the lyrics "There's one thing that you gotta do, To make me still want you" is replaced with "If there is one thing I cannot do, it is to nurse you." And who didn't attempt this in the most juvenile ways on the playground as a kid. As a kid songs like "Every Breath You Take" could easily be reconstructed into an ode to a bizarre bathroom experience that would have us in stitches. When in doubt Pop Culture will always thrive on the double entendre or a poop joke or two. Even as children we see the benefit of building something off the work of others.

As beings that posses a strange trait called creativity, our human experience in every form is the reference. Making the profound more personal is the name of the game with humans. Or like Bob Dylan proclaimed in that ground breaking album, maybe it's all just about "Bringing It All Back Home"

Originally published 1/11/2008 on Mog

Having Your Adolescent Mind Blown...

It was the summer of 1989 that I don't remember much of. A few small details - I'm 13, grossly under developed, stuck somewhere between wanting to be a teenager but still really I'm just a kid. I had all these feelings of someone older, but the depressing realization that I was stuck with this body for a little while longer.


But like the piano exploding at the end of the video, my mind, or should I say my very idea of what rock n' roll could or should be, is shattered into a million pieces. I had just heard Faith No More's "Epic" and I was hooked. It was rap, but it was metal too. It was SO different than the Aerosmith/Run DMC fusion of styles. I couldn't really understand it, but I knew I loved it.


I ended up watching MTV all summer, just to get a listen to that song (plus to figure out which member of En Vogue I thought was hotter). I don't even remember how I managed to scrape together $16 for the CD, since I already had a job - watching MTV and psychically beaming my need for that song to some how lodge itself into the hearts of a nation so I could see more of this strange sound that was twisting my sensibilities.


Today, "Epic" is probably thought of as a one hit wonder song for FNM, but those of us who continued to listen knnow that ir really peaked with the "Angel Dust" album. They still managed to put out a few good albums, but no song has ever grabbed a hold of me like that.

Originally published on Mog

Eep Ock Ork Uh Huh - A pop cultural refference I didn't miss, but couldn't talk about

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We used to drive around Downingtown bumping Bizarre Ride II. When I say bumping, I don't mean it by any "it's what the kids are saying" way. We were literally bumping around in one of our shitty cars, me with my hot Rockford Fosgate base box jury rigged into the fuse box of my Chevy Nova, connected on the other end to some shitty tape deck.


I had been introduced to this album by a graffiti kid in my school, and just the fact that it was different than the eras "gangsta's and ho's" mentality made it seem that much more refreshing. Plus. I'm a suburban white boy who wasn't about to represent for the city of Compton.


We loved this album. It was great. It didn't have any of the posturing that, well, just about every hip hop song of the era had. It was self deprecating, funny, and lewd. I mean how many rappers could top Fat Lips confession of picking up a transvestite by mistake (see "Oh Shit!").


Anyway, I felt great unease when we would listen to the song "Soul Flower" being that it had a derivation of a song sung by Judy Jetson's favorite rock star JJ Jetscreamer "Eep Ock Ork Uh Huh (that means I love you)". It puzzled me so (though in hind sight, I guess I should have felt liberated that others remembered this infectious diddy). In those days, I didn't quite understand the significance of reference to hip hop, I just knew I knew what song they were "copying", and it disturbed me slightly. I was 17 and much to reserved to admit my knowledge of a Jetson's episode.


So we continued bumping around the country side listening to the tape over and over, getting stoned and making runs on convenience stores - never imagining that some day I could sit at a computer and relay this moment of discord to others like myself.

Originally posted on Mog 4/11/2007

Suicide - Early Innovators

Originally released on Bronze Records in 1978
re-released in 2000 on mute records w/ eponymous L.P.


I originally published this on Julian Cope's Head Heritage site

A record of proof of an innovative band’s struggle with an unreceptive audience.

“23 Minutes over Brussels” was recorded in Brussels, Belgium on June 16th, 1978. Friend of the band, Howard Thompson recorded it on cassette tape and it was later released on as a flexi-disc insert for a music magazine. Fortunately the good people at Mute records re-released Suicides catalog in 2000. They have been digitally re-mastered so you wont have to scrounge the record bins to try to find these rare treasures. Both the album and the extra disc sound great (even 23 minutes sounds pretty good considering how it was recorded). It stands as a legendary performance, fortunate enough to be recorded. This is not your happy go lucky good time Rock n’ Roll concert, this is the dangerous riot inciting kind.

Perhaps if they weren't so far ahead of their time, the Suicide bootleg "23 minutes over Brussels" could have been the "Royal Albert Hall" bootleg for a new generation. Alan Vega and Martin Rev's second show in Europe ended in a primal scream of "Fuck you! It's about Frankie!" stands comparison to Bob Dylan's angry start of "Like a Rolling Stone" where he can be heard saying "Play fucking loud!" to the Hawks - as possible one of the greatest spontaneous Rock n' Roll moments of all time. In “23 minutes” Alan Vega is heard shouting, “Shut the fuck up, this is about Frankie!” Whistles cheers and boo's swell, the audience renders the sonic assault of Rev and Vega silent by stealing the microphone.

“23 minutes” goes a step further than the myth and lore of the infamous Dylan recording. Dylan’s heresy stood with his decision to “plug in.” This at the time was considered a step toward all that was marketable, because rock n’ roll was electric and was sold to the masses by evil corporations. Folk purists seemed to think of Dylan as a sellout for making what appeared as mainstream credibility. Suicide on the other hand, had no credibility. Rather than “plugging in” or “unplugging” they pared down to bare bones rock aggression.

Alan Vega, a New York City trash artist, formed Suicide with avant-garde jazz keyboardist Martin Rev in 1971. Vega’s idea was to strike Rock n’ Roll down to the bare minimum. Through the use of thrift store electric keyboards and a drum machine, Suicide set out to recreate rock n’ roll from the ground up. Dylan like Rev and Vega had a desire to find his own sound, only Suicide didn’t have a fan base that would come along for the ride.

The mid 70's New York scene was dictated by a common knee jerk reaction to the over indulgence and excess that music had become. Suicide stood on a different plane of aural deconstruction. Vega and Rev's interpretation of "basic" rock n' roll was to minimalize it to the nth degree. Although they started as a somewhat large free jazz ensemble, they soon were reduced to just a guitar, keyboard, and drum machine. A short time after that, they lost the guitar all together. Suicide in its Keyboard, Drum Machine, Vocal line up stands as the epitome of the defiance that Rock n' Roll was built on. Unfortunately, for most artists, the audience usually comes around to their way of thinking, a little too late.

Suicide stands as one of the most aptly named bands ever in rock n' roll. The bands name is described as a "great rock n' roll action word" by Rev in the liner notes of Mute records 2000 release of the self-titled debut album. “23 minutes” inevitably became their scarlet letter as far as performance was concerned. They rarely played live, and usually did to disastrous results. The short set of music showcased in "23 minutes" clearly demonstrates two individuals flying in the face of convention, screaming their guts out to be heard, and failing to make a poignant imprint on the listening audience.

Perhaps it was the back to basics mentality of the "Punk" world that was wrong. Suicide as a group, predate the earliest of the CBGB's scene by at least 3 years. With so much retro revisionism in contemporary music, one is hard pressed to find anything from that period that sounds as though it would be made in today's musical climate. Suicide does though. Most likely you would find them on a package tour with the likes of Stereo Lab or Mouse on Mars, and some how wouldn't sound quite as profound.

Legends and Myths can abound in Rock n' Roll. Many a writer is swept up in the nostalgia aspect of these mythologies and rumors. As we have become inundated with Rock n’ Roll tragedies we are left to ponder why Suicide didn’t become superstars? Possibly it's the fact that their music fell on many deaf ears, their performances and reputations preceded them. What in the 20+ years since the group's demise has sounded (or looked) as raw and heartfelt as that "Suicide Sound."

Suicide was the marriage of performance art with the attitude and pomp of rock n' roll. Only now, with hindsight, can one look at the postmodern implications of the performing side of Suicide. The records stand are the Rock n’ roll side of the band – a good reproduction of what Suicide sounded like live, with a few studio embellishments. The performance was the art. Like most performance art, their shows were temporal, intense and of the moment.

When Suicide unplugged from the popular conventions of Rock they were looked at as hooligans. No one wanted to book them, and audiences usually stayed about 10 feet from the stage, where a chain wielding Vega would swing wildly. One can look at the failure of the New York scene, or any scene for that matter, to accept Suicide as a legitimate act. We have only photographs to offer us a fraction of the story. Find a copy of this recording, sit back, open your ears, and grab a hold of the mental picture.